Alan twirled a beach ball. “They said it would ‘level the playing field,’ whatever that means. I say we get started with a game of beach volleyball!”
Kayla and Christie clapped and giggled. “Okay!”
Steven stepped up. “No, I think we have to do these tests first, like the script says.” He turned toward the cameraman. “Isn’t that right?” He walked too close to the lens; on screen, the blurred flowers of his Hawaiian shirt obstructing the others from view. The producer waved him away, his face angry.
“Okay, okay! I’ll ask this other guy.” He walked behind the lighting and sound equipment where the camera could not follow. After hushed, terse instructions from someone on set, he rejoined the group, saying, “Sorry! I was just checking!”
Ken kicked at the sand dejectedly.
Barbie marched toward him.
“Hi, Barbie. It’s good to see you.”
“You, too, Ken. You look great.”
He looked away. “That’s how they made me.”
After a moment of awkward silence, Barbie said, “I’m sorry we have to compete against each other. I intend to do my best, and play fair. Before we get started, I want to say good luck.” She turned to the group. “To everyone! May the best Barbie win! Uh – you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, we know,” Midge said in a voice that snarled on her lips so her smile nearly twisted out of shape.
Barbie ignored her. “Well! I’d better get settled in! Where do we sleep?”
Vinyl heads turned toward one another. Steven asked, “Didn’t they brief you at all, Barbie?”
“Sure, they gave me some papers on the airplane. But the clouds outside my window were just like cotton balls! So fluffy and pretty! Then I started to read, but I fell asleep after the first page.”
Midge snickered.
Theresa said, “This isn’t like a resort, Barbie.”
Barbie turned her wide blue eyes inland, where palm trees swayed in the breeze, seagulls glided above their heads.
“It sure looks like one! Except there’s no hotel.”
Christie said, “We have to set up our own shelters. It’s all part of the competition.”
“Shelters? Okay, then – I’ll help you set up yours, then you can help me.”
“No, Barbie,” said Theresa. “We can’t work together as a team. The whole point is for us to do things on our own.”
“Gosh, that’s no fun!”
“No, gosh, it isn’t,” Midge echoed.
“I wish I’d brought my Winnebago. That has such a nice bed, and a dinette, and even a pool!”
Ken held up one unbending arm. “Tomorrow night, we’ll have a meeting to decide who’ll be voted off the island.”
“People have to leave?” Barbie was incredulous.
“By the group’s decision,” Steven said.
Barbie wasn’t liking any of this, but didn’t want to discourage anyone.
In the morning, the group had their first competition – climbing the jagged rock face of a cliff. One by one they attempted to scale it, and one by one they fell. Barbie found it tough, but the unnatural slant of her feet allowed her to wedge into crevices where the men’s feet wouldn’t go. She managed to climb the highest of anyone, but just as she triumphantly reached toward the top, there was a zipping, a whir of rope through metal. Her harness disengaged, and she tumbled into the rocks below. A wave of mumbled concern was broken by snickering. Barbie’s hand rose unsteadily from the rocks, and she dragged herself up. Her bendable legs were bizarrely splayed, so she banged her calves back into alignment. Barbie’s indomitable spirit triumphed, despite the dent in her back.
At tribal council, she was saddened when Kayla and Alan were voted off the island. This endeared her to the crew, and to the audience in TV land.
In the next competition, each had to walk across a crude rope bridge before the fire burned through, sending them into the flames. Others slipped but grabbed the handrail ropes to keep from falling into the fire. Barbie went last. An ember rose and landed in the middle of the single rope that comprised the footbridge. She hurried, but just as she passed over it, the bottom rope snapped in two. She held onto the handrail ropes, shimmied along until one fell, as if untied. Barbie swung to the remaining rope, and, hanging upside down, she inched toward the finish line. The ends of her hair singed black against the flames. After falling to the ground on the other side, she patted the embers out. The crew cheered. She waved at the camera, her eyes bright, smile unwavering, smoke curling from her hair.
Barbie protested at the next tribal council when Steven and Christie were given a ticket back to the mainland. This gained her even greater support. The network execs were ecstatic that the ratings had gone through the thatched roof.
Next came the rafting competition, through Class 5 whitewater – the roughest of all – in inflatable boats. Barbie giggled as her raft slid down the jagged river. Ken used his paddle to steer clear of rocks, and swooshed past her. Barbie dug her oars into the water, too, but the boat’s sides were leaking air and she was soon sitting on a sheet of plastic with nothing to hold it afloat. Midge floated by just as Barbie was knocked off the deflated raft by a rush of water. She was pushed downstream by whitewater, past the safety rope where the others had put in, and over falls that made Niagara look like a trickle. The production crew held its collective breath, watching for a sign of her singed yellow-blond hair through the mists below. On shore, the others leaned forward, strained to see.
“I’m okay!” her tiny, far-off voice echoed. Then there she was, afloat as if out for an afternoon of sun and fun. When she rejoined the group, her hair was a rat’s nest. Midge offered to fix it, and chopped most of it off. She told Barbie she looked like a punk rocker. Barbie wished she could cry, just this once. In a wobbly voice she thanked Midge, stumbled to her shelter to lie down, and stared at the palm leaf ceiling. (What else could she do? She had no eyelids, after all.)
At the final tribal council, Ken and Theresa got the boot. Barbie gasped, said it wasn’t fair.
Now only she and Midge remained.
Ken held an orchid. “This is for the winner.”
Barbie and Midge’s heads pivoted toward each other, then back to Ken.
“Each of you has skills necessary for survival. You each showed great endurance and determination. In the end, though, the votes were overwhelmingly for…” he slid the orchid behind Barbie’s ear. “Barbie.”
“What?” Midge snatched the orchid from Barbie’s choppy hair. “No way! This belongs to me!” She ran beyond the firelight, and into the darkness. Barbie gasped when Midge screamed; her voice echoed eerily in the night.
“The producers figured she’d do that. They were waiting with a fishing net. Sounds like they caught her.”
The screeching grew more distant, as if Midge were being hauled away.
“I hope she’s all right.”
Barbie’s sympathy toward such a sore loser almost drew tears from the crew.
“She’s fine. Here.” Ken pulled a bigger, more exquisite orchid from behind his back.
“Oh, Ken! This should go to someone beautiful. Not me.” Her choppy hair, dented back, still slightly off-kilter legs made Barbie feel like a toy refugee.
“You are more beautiful now than ever, Barbie. The viewers’ votes prove that. You’re a hero to them.”
The camera zoomed in to her still-perky, if somewhat lopsided, face, then went to commercial.
She stood on the beach, looking at the island behind her. The helicopter’s whirling blades urged her inside, along with her publicist. “Come on, Barbie! We have lots to talk about.”
She climbed in, but part of her would stay on that island forever. She was a different Barbie, a new Barbie.
“Sales have been through the roof. There was a huge demand for a Survivor Barbie, so we’ve come up with a new line.” He held up a Barbie doll – it looked like it had gone through the trash compactor. It looked like her.
“But…”<
br />
He held up a doll with choppy blond hair tipped with black. “Here’s Rope Walk Barbie, and here’s Rock Climb Barbie…”
Each doll looked as if some little girl’s older, nasty brother had gotten hold of it. Barbie’s laugh sounded borderline hysterical.
Her publicist continued. “Little girls all over the world are begging for these. Girls who never wanted Barbies before want these.”
“But – why?”
“Simple. They can relate to you now. They’re not perfect, and neither are you.”
She looked out the window.
The island was a brown and green oval set in rings of deepening blue to aquamarine. It looked just as it did when she was arriving. Yet now, she’d consider it the place of her birth.
C.A. Masterson calls Pennsylvania home, but she’ll always be a Jersey girl at heart. When not with her family, she’s in her lair, concocting a magical brew of contemporary, historical, and fantasy/paranormal stories. Also writing as Cate Masters, look for her at catemasters.blogspot.com, and in far-flung corners of the web.
A SOLDIER’S GIFT
By
Don Helin
“They killed him. Damn it, they killed him.”
Dan's daughter stood in the muted light outside his study door, back rigid, her black T-shirt telegraphing the message, “War Sucks.” Dan walked over and tried to put his arms around her shoulders to comfort her. “Tina…”
She pushed back from him. “Don't, Dad, just don't. You men think you've got to be big-time warriors. See what it got him? Do you?” Tina gritted her teeth and exhaled, her eyes puffy and red. “He wanted to be an all-state quarterback just like you, then a chopper pilot just like you. So he went off to war just like you. Look what it got him. Damn all you men. And damn war.”
Dan sagged back against the door as she ran down the hall, crying, her pain etched in his brain. He sank onto the red Chesterfield couch, the one Dan and his wife had bought the year before Brian was born. He placed his finger on the right arm where an eight-year-old Brian had burned a hole experimenting with lighting a cigarette. Brian had wanted to be like his dad even then.
He stood and paced around the study in his navy blue suit, heart heavy, tossing a football in the air, catching it, gripping it, and pulling it to his chest. After he walked about ten steps, he turned back and started again.
Dan stopped and stared at a picture on the wall, struggling to breathe, as if an evil force had sucked all of the oxygen out of the room.
Twenty years. Twenty years since the boy in that picture had been little. Dan had been Brian's T-ball coach, Boy Scout leader and peewee football coach. He remembered the week-long canoe sojourns, particularly the one when Brian tipped over the canoe, trying to catch that fish. How the two of them had laughed. The memory made him laugh, then the laugh caught in his throat, gagging him.
Dan's mind still couldn’t compute the words from the soldiers who had come to their door. He stumbled to the window, choking, as he opened it and drew in the dry morning air. The branches of the maple tree swaying in the brisk October wind scratched at the edge of the shutter. A cardinal sat on one of the limbs, singing, but Dan looked away.
He straightened and glanced around the study, familiar but now surreal – the executive desk with its worn armchair, his first purchase, and the computer he'd finally mastered with Brian's help. How long it had taken him, and how much fun the two of them had. Yes, the two of them. Always the two of them.
Dan grabbed the football, straightened his suit and tie, and wandered upstairs to Brian’s room. He stood in the doorway—the walls were decorated with memorabilia of a successful high school career: homecoming king, student council treasurer, high school diploma, and six letters, three in football and three in track.
He walked over to the dresser, and placed the football in the holder. He winced as he saw the two footballs, side by side—Brian’s idea. Dan had been presented the game ball when Washburn High School won the Minneapolis District Five title. Twenty-four years later, Brian had been given the game ball when Washington Lee won the Northern Virginia regional title.
Picking up Brian’s football, Dan cradled it in his arms—held it to his chest, stroked it with his fingers. Felt the smoothness. He could still smell the locker room, hear the laughter, feel the pull of the tape, imagine the pain so bad that he couldn’t even raise his arms above his head, yet, then, the sweet rush of victory and celebration. God, he’d loved it, and Brian had too.
Tears blurring his vision, he grabbed the football and rushed from the room, banging his shoulder on the door frame as he stumbled out into the hall.
Dan wandered toward the master bedroom and pushed the door open. His wife stood by the window, her arms wrapped around her chest. He walked over and placed his left hand on Sara's shoulder. Began to massage her neck.
Outside the window, the wind whistled through the trees, their leaves colored bright red, orange, and yellow.
“His favorite time of year,” Dan said. “He loved the sugar maples.”
“I know.” A tiny smile lit Sara’s face. “When Brian saw leaves he thought of swirling color and foliage. You and Tina always think of raking and bagging. How can we all be so different, yet so much the same?”
“Funny, isn't it? Hard to believe that Tina and Brian came from the same gene pool.” He peered over her shoulder. “What's that?”
She held up a brown teddy bear, the one with a torn ear and missing button eye. Brian's favorite.
Dan's heart lurched. “Where did you find that?”
“I kept it all these years.” Sara rolled a white tissue in her hand. “I wanted to surprise him when he had children... Let them know what their father had slept with until he was almost seven years old. He would have pretended to be upset, but I know he would have loved it."
Dan nodded, unable to respond. Oh, it hurt. Grandchildren.
“Keep massaging, it feels good.” She sat down in the rocker while he stroked her red hair, now tinged with threads of gray. She looked up at him. “I haven’t seen Tina yet this morning. Is she ready for the memorial service?”
“She was in my study a few minutes ago. Mad. Mad at me. Mad at men.”
“I know. This is a repeat of my nightmare when you were in Iraq. You were so excited to go off to that stupid war.”
“And you stayed back here and joined the protests in the streets.” He plopped the football into her arms, but it fell to the floor.
She jumped up and faced him. “Don't go making light of the anti-war protests.” She picked up the football and kicked it, sending it sailing into a table, nearly breaking a vase. “Maybe if we'd been better at it, we wouldn't be in that God-awful Afghanistan and Brian would be here...” She slumped down in the chair, wrapping the teddy bear in her arms. She bent her head to lay her cheek against it. Cuddling it.
Dan pulled out a memory. Iraq. The first Gulf war. He'd been a young, fire-breathing chopper pilot; a warrant officer with the world by the tail. Sara hadn’t wanted him to volunteer for overseas duty, but he needed to see if he had it in him to face danger and come out alive.
He flew medevac missions with a dustoff unit. As the year progressed, he found himself developing confidence evacuating wounded soldiers. Soon he was headed home, a chapter closing. At least he thought the chapter had closed, but like many of his buddies, he woke up screaming with nightmares for months after his return.
Brian had wanted to test himself the same way. How could Dan argue? Oh, why didn't he? Why?
“I can’t believe it.” Her voice shook him back to the present. She gazed out the window, hugging the bear as if it would run away. “It's like a bad dream. I want to wake up, but I can't.”
Dan stared at her back, his face like glass, about to break. If only he hadn't told Brian all those war stories, how they'd helped him to grow.
Sarah turned and saw his face, stood and tried to take him in her arms. Hug him tight. “It’s not your fault. We're going to get through
this together.”
Dan pulled away and staggered out of the room, then found himself back in his study, looking out the window at the leaves shifting in the breeze. Brian should be here, in his second year at William and Mary.
Dan leaned his head against the window. He had to be strong for his family, but he wasn’t. Brian had volunteered for the army, gone to flight school, was flying that chopper because of him. He kicked at the floor and groaned. Too late to take all those stories back. Too late.
He collapsed back in the chair, face in his hands. Startled, he jumped up. Something in the seat. He looked down to see Brian’s football lying there.
Dan stared at the ball. “How the hell did that get there? I left it upstairs.” He picked it up and whirled to look around the room. Empty.
Turning back toward the window, Dan saw a little boy waving to him from out in the yard. Brian?
He pushed the window open to call out to the boy, but one quick wave and the image was gone. Nothing in the yard except the dry leaves, swirling in the October wind.
Dan stood silent, then he turned to go find Sara and Tina. They needed him. He needed them. Together.
During Don Helin's time in the military, he spent seven years in the Pentagon. Those assignments provide the background for his thrillers. Don's novel, Thy Kingdom Come, was published in March 2009. His latest thriller, Devil's Den is due out this fall. For more information go to his website www.donhelin.com.
Operation Pumpkin Patch
By
Gina Napoli
Raymie, Brett, and Dosey Doe had to tiptoe home from school each day for two whole weeks. Through the woods they pranced on two hind legs instead of their usual four hooves. Lumbering Woods was too thick for them to run and play, Dad had explained. Too thick for the Doe Brothers to butt heads the way they always did in Mr. Spotter’s gym class. Too thick with crunchy leaves and noisy pine needles. And much too thick with hunters.
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